Maureen McLane (born December 24, 1967) is an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...

, and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Life

McLane was raised in upstate New York. She holds degrees from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

(where she was a

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

), and

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. She is the author of four books of poetry, including ''This Blue''. ''My Poets'' (FSG, 2012), a hybrid of memoir and criticism, was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. McLane is also a contributing editor at Boston Review and poetry editor at ''Grey''. She is currently professor of English at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Reception and influence

McLane's first full-length poetry collection (''Same Life: poems'', Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and The Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award. It was named as one of the

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

Literary Editor's Best Books. Her follow-up book, ''World Enough: poems'' ( Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), was selected by Paul Muldoon in

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

as a best poetry book of the year. McLane achieved literary celebrity with the publication of her hybrid criticism-biography ''My Poets'', which

Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip ...

editor Lorin Stein called "the survey course of my dreams." ''My Poets'' was lauded in

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, NPR, Bookforum,

New York Observer New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

, and elsewhere for its groundbreaking hybridity. Writing in Bookforum,

Parul Sehgal Parul Sehgal is an American literary critic based in New York, who publishes primarily in American venues. She is a former senior editor and columnist at ''The New York Times Book Review'', and was one of the team of book critics at ''The New Yo ...

remarked that "To read McLane is to be reminded that the brain may be an organ, but the mind is a muscle. Hers is a roving, amphibious intelligence; she's at home in the essay and the fragment, the polemic and the elegy."

Awards

* National Book Critics Circle 2012 Finalist in Autobiography * Golden Dozen Award, New York University College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Award, 2012 * New York University Humanities Institute, Faculty Award for Publishing the Most Books in 2008 *

Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Committee on Undergraduate Education, 2006 * John Clive Teaching Award in History and Literature, Harvard University, 2005 * National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing, 2003

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections

* * * * *McLane, Maureen N. (2017). ''Some Say: poems''. Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. *McLane, Maureen N. (2019). ''What I'm Looking For: selected poems 2005-2017''. Penguin. *McLane: Maureen N. (2021). ''More Anon: Selected Poems.'' Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

List of poems

Non-fiction

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McLane, Maureen 1967 births Living people American literary critics American women literary critics Harvard University alumni New York University faculty The New Yorker people American Rhodes Scholars University of Chicago alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford 21st-century American poets